#30 – Revisiting 10 Lessons Learned From The Retire Sooner Podcast

Jeff Lloyd [00:01:02]:
Great to be here.

Wes Moss [00:01:04]:
You and I have poured through. We’ve done so many episodes of the. I don’t know, we’re over 150 or so. Maybe that’s not a lot compared to the Joe Rogan podcast, but we did a lot of really cool interviews. It’s hard to find good guests, and we search high and far for those guests. We were looking for people that are doing talks already. We find them doing interviews. They’ve maybe written books.

Wes Moss [00:01:26]:
They’re professors, very often professors or have been professors on the particular topics that we invite them on to talk about. But the retire sooner podcast is similar to what we speak about here on money matters. The focus is a little bit more on early retirement or the mission of the retire sooner podcast is to help a million people retire at least one year sooner. We thought that if we do that or we’re able to do that, that means we’ve created a million years extra of financial independence or early retirement. That sounds, it sounds like a really great goal. But there are millions of people in America, and I think that if we can help people shave off six months or a year or two years of working, then I think we’re doing our job on the retire sooner podcast. But it’s not just about the money lessons. We also bring in experts that talk about socialization as an example, community, sense of purpose, exercise, health, all of the things that contribute to the whole picture, bigger picture of the happy retiree.

Wes Moss [00:02:32]:
So it really keeps things very interesting when we find guests. And from those podcasts, Jeff, you and I have poured through many of those interviews to find our favorites. And then really where we learned the most, the biggest. Aha. The biggest. Wide eyed, wow, that’s really important. I can’t wait to share that. And after doing that, and I’ve worked on this project now for a couple of months.

Wes Moss [00:02:56]:
So after over two years of the retire sooner podcast, and now the last couple of months, trying to zoom in on our favorite podcast and where we really learn something the most is what I’ve been working on. I wanted to share those with you today here on money matters. Now, I’ve got ten of these, there’s a couple honorable mentions. So I actually have probably a dozen or so of my top happy retiree lessons from the retire sooner podcast. I think we’ll get to at least, we’ll get to close to half of those today. We’re going to do five at least today on again, taking some of our favorite guests, what they have taught us on the retire sooner podcast. All right, first on the list, lesson number one, and this comes from the data scientist, Seth Stevens Davidowitz. What I learned, well, exactly what humans describe as ultimate happiness.

Wes Moss [00:03:51]:
Pretty good one to start out with.

Jeff Lloyd [00:03:53]:
Yeah. And you can find this in episode.

Wes Moss [00:03:54]:
148 right under the podcast tab on westmoss.com dot. So first of all, Seth uses this anonymous search data. He was a data scientist. It’s kind of creepy to think about a data scientist looking at what your search data. And he describes this, first of all, is if you’re looking for what people, if you’re looking at the data. And again, supposedly it’s anonymous, supposedly. But we’re talking about millions and millions of data points looking at what people are searching for in the privacy of their own home when you’re a data scientist. So he’s looking at the questions people that are asking to understand what they really care about as opposed to the answers they’re getting back.

Wes Moss [00:04:39]:
But no, what they’re really what, what they’re asking gives us the answer to begin with. He also looks at tax records and IR’s data and really any study that you can think of around the globe to try to get the answers to a whole host of questions. As an example, he’s written about what really makes relationships ask. He studied lots of data on dating sites, and evidently what we click on or what we like on a dating site is often totally the opposite of what actually makes a relationship work. So the data behind what makes a relationship last happens to be about the opposite of what we choose on a dating site. Evidently, occupation is really important on dating sites. Obviously, looks is super important on dating sites. But again, according to long term data on what makes relationships last and what makes couples happy together and lasting relationships are things like whether both partners have the same level of conscientiousness or whether both partners have a similar growth mindset or similar senses of life satisfaction.

Wes Moss [00:05:55]:
That’s according to the data. What makes relationships last? This one’s interesting, too. Jeff Lloyd, what makes a great parent? And I guess this came from cross referencing how the children of parents fared in their careers. So what makes successful kids? Meaning how do you end up a, quote, great parent? And I think there’s no perfect answer here, of course, because I certainly haven’t figured it out. But it shows that neighbors, your neighbors, the neighborhood, or your actual neighbors or your parents social network is more determinant of your children’s future job success than almost anything.

Jeff Lloyd [00:06:31]:
So is that like saying it’s more important who you know than what you know?

Wes Moss [00:06:35]:
Yeah, it’s almost who your parents hang out with and spend a lot of time with has more impact on children, evidently, than almost any other parental decision. Now, again, exactly how we figure that out through data and aggregating anonymous data science and tax records, I don’t know. But I like how he’s arriving at these answers. Seth is also a really big fan of the Mappiness project. With an m it’s happiness, except with an m that studied what environments and activities really made people the most happy. So whether you’re inside or outside, at work or at school or an event or really any place geographically pinpointed, also with the weather at any given time, and reporting if you are with people or not, all through millions and millions of data points, asking over 60,000 people three times a day for a year on how they were feeling through an app on their iPhone. Again, this is the Mappiness project. As far as contributing to our happiness, sick in bed was the worst activity.

Wes Moss [00:07:55]:
Work was the second worst activity. By the way, there’s 40 of these activities listed out, worst on the list. Where we’re the least happy. Sick in bed. That one makes sense. Number 39 out of 40 work. Here are a couple of the winners. Number five on the list, gardening.

Wes Moss [00:08:14]:
Number four on the list, some combination of either sports, running or exercise. That one makes sense. Think about you going for a run, how great you feel right after you get a ding on your iPhone. How you feeling? You’re feeling usually pretty great. Producer mallory here is shaking her head on that one. Number three on the list of top happiness activities. Being at an event or an expedition or a museum or a library, that’s a little surprising, I think, about having to be at a library that was usually cramming for a test, feeling some anxiety. I don’t have a good feeling in libraries.

Wes Moss [00:08:49]:
But I think today, if I were in a library, and I haven’t been in a library for so long, pretty calm and comfortable. So I get that one. Number two, being at a theater, dance, or concert oriented event, which is interesting, I wouldn’t have thought of that. That’s number two on the list. And then number one, this one is probably no shocker. Number one, intimacy. That’s number one. That’s at the very top of the list.

Wes Moss [00:09:14]:
And if you think about those five, you think gardening, intimacy. Think about some sort of musical event. You could trace almost all of those things back to things that humans have appreciated from the very beginning of time. Communication. Think about dancing and singing around a fire. As soon as we had modern civilization, we loved. It was such a privilege to be able to go to the theater and see a show. And I think growing things and gardening is just fundamental to our survival.

Wes Moss [00:09:45]:
So no wonder it brings us this sense of peace and joy and happiness. Pretty awesome. But if you put it all together and assimilate exactly what humans really want. First, humans want to be by the water. And again, this comes from the Mapitis project. Because we pinpoint different levels of whether you’re feeling good or not so good. Whether you’re in the middle of the city or you’re near a lake or a river or body of water. So first we want to be by the water.

Wes Moss [00:10:10]:
If you feel good by the water, it’s because it’s programmed into you for some reason, for some reason or another. And maybe that makes evolutionary sense as well. Think about how scarce it would be. Imagine if you’re in the middle of the country and you’re miles away from a river. It’s not just you’re missing the view. You may not have anything to drink or survive. Maybe that’s part of the calmness that comes around being close to water, is that, hey, we can actually survive and not die of thirst. Next, our ideal temperature, it’s around 80 degrees.

Wes Moss [00:10:45]:
This might go back to survival as well. Not only is it comfortable to be 80 degrees, you’re also not worried about frostbite or freezing to death. And then number three on the list, the yearning to be sitting beside a romantic partner and experiencing intimacy. Which, again, what Seth is saying here, it’s. It’s any form of that, whether it’s actual sex or just hugging or cuddling, it all counts as intimacy. So put it all together. We want to be by the water on a warm day with someone we love. And that’s a pretty cool formula for exactly what humans describe as ultimate happiness.

Wes Moss [00:11:25]:
And that’s episode 148 on the retire sooner podcast, Jeff Lloyd. Next on the list, here comes from author Ken Honda. We did this interview from his home in Japan. God bless teams and Skype.

Jeff Lloyd [00:11:42]:
Yeah. This is episode 133, one trick to change your relationship with money from Pin Honda.

Wes Moss [00:11:48]:
That’s the name of the podcast. Okay, so in the United States, it’s effortless to fall into the trap of underappreciating money, whether it’s coming into your bank account or it’s leaving your bank account. That’s not enough when it comes in. Oh, it’s too much when it’s going out. So we have this sense of angst with money and how we appreciate the flow of it, whether it’s coming in or coming out. Maybe your property tax seemed too high. Gas prices are too high. Price of beef through the roof.

Wes Moss [00:12:20]:
Parking tickets always strike when we’re most vulnerable. And culturally as Americans, we resent those things. And those emotions can create an unhealthy relationship between us and our finances. Ken Honda completely flips this money appreciation relationship on its head. Ken taught me how to reverse my personal money appreciation dynamic. So when it comes to money, he teaches us to appreciate everything that is coming into your financial life. So part of that trick is to understand the root of where that money is coming from. So rather visualizing it as cash or a paycheck, imagine the people who pay for the services you provided.

Wes Moss [00:13:09]:
In Ken’s case, it’s his readers. So he’s thankful for every single person that’s ever bought one of his seven or 8 million copies that he sold. One day, when his daughter thanked him for buying her an ice cream coat, he told her, no, it’s the readers. It’s our readers, the purchasers of my books, that deserve the thanks. So, in his case, happy money is in one part, being thankful for what does come in or whatever an investment does provide. Now, as far as appreciation out, what about money going out? Traffic tickets? According to Ken Honda, they’re okay. Bill, to your lawyer, it’s okay. Your property taxes, I guess it’s okay.

Wes Moss [00:13:53]:
It’s appreciate what it’s providing. Your student loan payments, try to appreciate the root of what the payment or the bill or the ticket or the unliked charge is. It doesn’t mean you have to like it or love it, but appreciate it. Ken, of course, tell us a story about getting pulled over for, I think, either running a red light or maybe this was a traffic ticket or some interaction with a cop in Japan where he was going to get some sort of charge, some fine. And he thanked the officer, he said, thank you so much for giving me this ticket or this fine, because I appreciate what you do. And he genuinely, I think he genuinely, Jeff, I think he generally meant it. But the great news is, actually also got him out of the ticket.

Jeff Lloyd [00:14:42]:
It got him out of the ticket. And it was a parking ticket.

Wes Moss [00:14:45]:
It was parking. Okay.

Jeff Lloyd [00:14:46]:
Yeah. And he was able to talk his way out of it. But it was a good lesson for me personally, because I think literally the next week after, after the podcast and interview, I got a speeding ticket. One, I didn’t get to talk my way out of it. Two, it was a learning lesson for me on actually putting happy money into practice, as I was somewhat thankful to be able to pay that traffic ticket for the services I get back from the local police. But it was just an interesting way of thinking about paying a ticket that I’ve never had before hearing Ken Honda talk about it.

Wes Moss [00:15:23]:
Yeah, it’s a pretty cool, easy dynamic to flip if you don’t feel this way already. It was really literally the next day I started putting this into practice, and I’m certainly not perfect at it, but it really has helped the way I think about the flow in and out when it comes to money. Number three on the list, this is from Emily S. Fahani Smith. She’s a writer and a speaker and studied at Dartmouth, and she got her master’s degree in positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. What did I learn, by the way? Jeff Lloyd, what episode is that?

Jeff Lloyd [00:16:01]:
Yeah, this is episode 64. Why happiness is not necessarily the right goal.

Wes Moss [00:16:06]:
Why happiness is not necessarily the right goal? That’s the title of this. You could find it on the podcast tab right on wesmoss.com dot. But what I learned, happiness. This, according to Emily, happiness is overrated relative to something more permanent, which is belonging, meaning and purpose. Belonging to a group, that a sense of belonging is more powerful than happiness. So whether that’s a church or an organization or a social group or religious group, maybe it’s even being a Georgia football fan. That’s, that qualifies, because the activity of belonging, according to Emily, is more important than the activity of happiness. Meaning, meaning and purpose are derived from these communities that we build around us.

Wes Moss [00:16:53]:
So Emily’s four pillars, and I don’t pretend to be an expert on any of these pillars. And I’m learning, again, these are lessons from the retire sooner podcast. Belonging, purpose, storytelling, which is interesting, and then transcendence. I don’t think I’m even going to try to describe the transcendence one, but at least when she describes it, it does make some sense. So the sense of belonging, of course, that’s critical. We know that for happy retirees, it’s something that we all have to continue to work towards. Humans are super social animals, and we can’t survive without a community. Now, purpose means that we have a at least my perspective on this.

Wes Moss [00:17:32]:
We have a robust list of core pursuits that help give our lives meaning, and that’s an essential ingredient for a happy retiree. We know it anecdotally, and of course we see it in our own lives. And of course, our happy retiree research shows this. What is your purpose? And Emily reminded me that our, what is our sense of purpose for the retire sooner podcast and, and really for money matters? Well, to help at least a million people retire at least one year sooner, that’s a million extra years of financial independence. That’s a purpose I can get behind. So it helps us all tremendously to have a sense of purpose. And purpose can help retirees find a reason to get out of bed and thrive any given day. Now, storytelling, which is next on her list, is vital.

Wes Moss [00:18:22]:
I still don’t know if I totally understand this, but according to Emily, storytelling is vital because we all arrange our different experiences into our own narrative, and that narrative allows us to define ourselves in the world. Without a good story, our wisdom can kind of get locked inside of us, and it’s not easily shared with those around us that need to hear it. Again, I think from my perspective, one of my stories is that, I guess I like to educate and give people confidence about their future from a financial perspective and how to have a happy retirement. I’ll say it one more time. So Emily made me think about this. Well, wait, what is my story? Well, I guess my story, in large part, is to just help educate and give people confidence about their future from a financial perspective and from a happy retirement perspective. No coincidence that the mission statement of our firm is helping families find happiness in retirement. So, again, I got a lot out of the Emily S.

Wes Moss [00:19:31]:
Fahani Smith interview, and I’ve actually played this here on some holiday weekends on money matters. Lesson number four comes from Tom Vanderbilt. He’s a writer. He’s a really good writer, and he writes about a lot of different topics, design and technology and science and culture. But I interviewed him on this topic about his book called beginners. Here’s what I learned. We need to stop being afraid of learning something new. Just because as adults, we may not think we’d be good at it.

Wes Moss [00:20:09]:
Much like how children approach the world, they’re always doing something new, not afraid of. Oh, I don’t think I’m going to be good at that, because everything’s new as a kid or a beginner. So the older we get, the more we stop looking for and trying new core pursuits. Hey, we’re not good at sports or we’re not good at music. Oh, no, we’re not good at the arts. Tom taught me to scrap all that. That’s a silly narrative. It is time to learn chess.

Wes Moss [00:20:38]:
It is time to learn how to sing or learn how to surf or learn how to snowboard or learn how to golf or learn how to draw. Just because you didn’t learn when you were a kid doesn’t mean it’s too late to start today. I started golf. I was almost. I was almost 40 years old when I started playing golf. That’s kind of old to. To play golf. Jeff Lloyd, you’re laughing at that.

Jeff Lloyd [00:21:01]:
How’s that new corporate suit working out for you?

Wes Moss [00:21:04]:
It’s a. It is you. As you know, it’s like some of the best days ever. Wednesday afternoons, being able to play nine holes of golf, and you’re doing it.

Jeff Lloyd [00:21:14]:
In a group that’s a social network, and you’re outside. Right. And. And with you, you’re. You’re always near the water.

Wes Moss [00:21:21]:
Oh, good. That’s true. I’ve lost many a ball in the water. Maybe it’s because I feel the closer I get to water, the happier I feel. I never thought of it that way. You’re right. That’s why I hit it in the water all the time. So, again, snowboarding.

Wes Moss [00:21:37]:
Here’s another one. I didn’t even. I snowboarded for two days when I was 16, and I kind of learned it and then never really did it again. I didn’t restart until I was almost 40. And now golf and snowboarding are two of my very favorite activities, and all four of my kids do both of those things now. And being able to golf or snowboard with any four of my boys is literally the best thing in the world. It’s the best thing in the world. So I’m glad I took it up, even though Jeff lloyd, I may not be the best golfer in the world.

Wes Moss [00:22:12]:
By the way, does Hunter play? Does your son play golf yet?

Jeff Lloyd [00:22:16]:
He does play golf, and he’s. He’s not a snowboarder. He’s. He’s skied before, but he loves golf. He plays basketball, baseball, football. Um, but something special about golf. He likes it.

Wes Moss [00:22:29]:
It’s pretty awesome in them. So again, in particularly for retirees, you may be even more ingrained at, oh, I’m not going to be good at that, and I don’t like that necessarily or I’d never have done that. And I’m already 60 and it’s too late to start. Tom Vanderbilt makes a really good case, and he spent an entire year doing everything new that he had never done, including juggling and playing chess and singing, all things he thought he would never be able to be good at. Surfing, which seems almost impossible. But he spent an entire year learning purely for the sake of learning. And in the end, he came away with the understanding that the adventure of learning all those new skills, even though he wasn’t great at some of them, was even more gratifying than the end result. So put your beginner cap on, particularly if you’re getting close to retirement and try something totally, totally new.

Wes Moss [00:23:33]:
Even if you don’t think you’re going to be any good at it, you might end up loving it. Lesson number five, this one comes from. Truly, I’m not using this word lightly here. Legendary author Mitch album. He’s the author of Tuesdays with Maury. What did I learn? Giving is living. Giving is living. And by the way, Tuesdays with Mori.

Wes Moss [00:24:00]:
He sold over 40 million copies of this book. And it’s not a coincidence. This is because it has a really powerful message and he’s a phenomenal writer. So Mitch wrote Tuesdays with Maury as a memoir. It was a recollection of the conversations that he had with his former sociology professor, Maury Schwartz, who was dying of ALS. They met on Tuesdays, and Maury, who essentially taught Mitch an entire collection of wisdom about life and death and love and work and community and family and aging and forgiveness and the importance of embracing every single moment, both good and bad, in life. And the secret sauce to all of it, again, according to Mitch, is that giving is really the key to living. Giving allows us to extend ourselves for the sake of others, for our loved ones, for strangers, for students, for anyone.

Wes Moss [00:25:08]:
And when we engage in the act of giving, the act itself creates purpose and this great meaning in our own lives. Now, Mitch is a pretty wealthy guy, at least I can only imagine he’s a pretty wealthy guy. He sold 40 million books. Even at pop, it’s some real money. But he says that he sleeps best not on his 14 inch thick tempur pedic controlled mattress or bed, but on the four inch mattress in 90 degree heat at the orphanage that he found in Haiti. Because it’s the sound of joy coming from kids and the villagers that he helps outside his door in the morning when he wakes up, that’s what truly brings him joy. He will say, I sleep the best on this skimpy little mattress right on the floor because I know what I’m doing is so impactful for everyone around me. And that comes in a couple of forms.

Wes Moss [00:26:13]:
So one, connection to others, two, personal growth, and then three, giving creates a real legacy for what we give today in this world that lasts well beyond our life, whether it’s teaching knowledge, education, skills, or something financial that can and should last well beyond our life so we can give to create a real legacy. More money matters straight ahead. If you’ve ever done a Jane Fonda workout or if you remember as a kid, Rocky running the steps, and if Michael Keaton is still Mister mom to you, then guess what? It’s officially time to do some retirement planning. It’s Wes Moss from money matters. Weren’t those the good old days? Well, with a little bit of retirement planning, there are plenty of good days ahead. Schedule an appointment with our team today@yourwealth.com. dot that’s your, yourwealth.com Dot top ten retiree lessons happy retiree lessons from the retire Sooner podcast number six, as we forge into our next five secrets of happy retirees from the retire Sooner podcast. NaNCY COLLIMER, and this, I actually, this was a suggestion from several of the families that I work with at Capital investment advisors that people kept bringing up this concept of second act careers.

Wes Moss [00:27:45]:
Wes, have you read second act careers? Have you read second act careers? Because it comes up all the time. And what we learned from Nancy is how to explore a second act career. And here’s why it’s so important. I don’t know the exact number for this, Jeff Floyd, but I would say at least 50%, maybe even more than that. Maybe three quarters of every retiree that I’ve ever worked with doesn’t have a black and white retirement date. It’s, it’s not, that doesn’t happen. It certainly happens. I was, I was with at and t, let’s say, for 30 years, or General Motors for 32 years, and I got the job when I was pretty young and I worked my way through the ranks, and it’s been a good company all these years, and I’ve got a great retirement package, and they just offered me another one, and I’m done.

Wes Moss [00:28:29]:
And I’m out. I’m done. And I don’t need to do anything else. I’m not going to go work part time as an engineer working on lithium batteries to help the next ev vehicle. I’m just done. I’ve done it. I don’t have a really good interim step here to maybe go work a little bit. So I’m totally done.

Wes Moss [00:28:48]:
And again, that happens. But so often, in fact, more often than not, I find people in their sixties that are getting to the point where they’re pretty much ready to retire, but just not quite. And another two, three, maybe five years of working does wonders for both them financially so that they can delay when they’re going to take Social Security, as that amount can go up the longer they wait. And they may have saved enough, but working another couple of years allows them to not start tapping into that money for what we call the retirement gray zone. But it’s not easy to find that. It’s not the easiest thing to go find a second act career. And that’s exactly what Nancy Collamer is an expert with. She wrote the book second at careers and teaches us in this podcast how to go about doing that.

Wes Moss [00:29:42]:
Are you going to end up being consultant in the line of work you were already in, or are you going to do something completely different? Are you going to go. She tells the story of a rabbi who is good at speaking to a public group that ultimately used those speaking skills to do something completely different. And he ended up being a stand up comedian. That’s an extreme case. That’s kind of this fantasy. Oh, wouldn’t it be great to go be, I’m going to be a hot air balloon pilot once I retiree? Retire from building cars.

Jeff Lloyd [00:30:12]:
Yeah. The rabbi to the standout comedian seems a little bit more extreme than the 20 year, 30 year contractor that is now working at the local hardware store.

Wes Moss [00:30:21]:
Right. But we think about how to go into, let’s say, another type of career, and that includes people that were entrepreneurs and maybe they started their own business and then became consultants or they took on new roles in a nonprofit company. Nancy tells us stories about folks who have gone back to school and gotten a completely new degree or taken on a part time job, something they always wanted to do or become, or became a mentor or coach, or even became a columnist in all sorts of industries, the arts, media, technology, healthcare. A couple of examples. Corporate executive to none, profit leader as an example. Connie was an exec at one of the big consulting companies. She had a brutal work schedule. She was burned out by her late fifties by around age 57.

Wes Moss [00:31:16]:
But instead of stopping work completely, she took about six months off and then landed a role as an executive with half the work and 90% less stress and a nonprofit that she had a really big connection to. And she loved it so much. She did that all the way, totally second at career all the way until she was in her mid sixties. Natalie, the nurse, became a health coach. So Natalie was a nurse for 25, 30 years. And instead of stopping completely, she decided to use her medical knowledge and what she had done for her career to become a health coach. It’s not the same job at all, but there’s at least some tie into what she used to do. So she helps coach people for better lifestyle choices, helps people manage chronic conditions, and loves offering this more comprehensive, holistic approach to people’s health.

Wes Moss [00:32:15]:
Lisa went from being a teacher to an educational consultant. So after 25 plus years in the classroom, Lisa ended up using her knowledge as a teacher to become an educational consultant. So she went back into schools and helped with curriculum development, training teachers, helping with new educational initiatives, but again, using her prior career in some capacity to do something very much new, very much a second act career. So when you start going through these stories that Nancy tells, she teaches us that it’s not the second act career isn’t just a light switch. I’m going to do something totally new. It takes a while to figure out what you were already good at and then how you can apply it to maybe the same industry or maybe your same skillset to a completely new industry. That’s a process and that’s a journey. And it’s important for people considering any sort of second act career if you’re going to end up having a retirement gray zone for a couple of years or maybe it’s more than a few years.

Wes Moss [00:33:18]:
I think it’s really important to listen to Nancy’s advice and take a look at the book second act careers. Number seven on the list. Jeff Floyd, the millionaire next door. Bill Danko. This is really cool. Many of you have, if you’re listening, maybe you’ve read the millionaire next door. It is, I think, the first book I read as an intern back in the 1990s when I was in my first summer job. So this was a big deal for me to be able to talk to the author of this 25 plus or 25 plus years later.

Wes Moss [00:33:52]:
So Bill Danko, one of the authors of the millionaire next door one, I just love him telling the story about how he did the research. He did the research in the early nineties when it was they were paying people a dollar. They would put a dollar bill in an envelope to guilt people into filling out these questionnaires. Imagine you get this questionnaire, you throw it out. But a dollar, they found, gave people at least a little bit of an incentive or some sort of guilt factor to actually fill it out. So that’s what got their response rate up. But the primary lessons here. One, frugality is the cornerstone of a lot of wealth building.

Wes Moss [00:34:31]:
He reminds us of the all important delayed gratification, Benjamin Franklin’s advice of being industrious and persevering as a saver. Two, on Bill Danko’s list, focus on wealth building activities, meaning that with every move you make, whatever youre going to do financially, starts with saving and investing as early as humanly possible, as young as possible. And investing, though, is much more important than displaying social status, which goes back to this point around frugality and financial independence that you will eventually garner with years of sacrifices is where were all headed. The millionaire next door really understands that. Number three from Beldenko. We’ve got to be on the same page with our spouse, with our partner. We’ve got to actually talk about money and the millionaire next door. One of their real habits is they’re able to talk through what their financial goals are.

Wes Moss [00:35:28]:
If you’re not on the same page with your spouse, you can go through years of conflicted ideas. Not only is it hard on the relationship, but it’s hard to really build financial momentum if you’re kind of running in different directions. And he reminds us that those who achieve this millionaire status, one of the cornerstones of that is really being on the same page with your spouse. This is kind of a fun test for everyone listening. And of course, soon as I was reminded of this formula, Jeff Floyd, I did the math on it as well. But Bill taught us the big differences between Paws and UAW. So PAW and a UAW, not the best acronym, but it stands for Aw, is accumulator of wealth. So relative to what you are earning, so are you prodigious, average or under accumulator of wealth? Here’s the formula to determine which, which category land in here.

Wes Moss [00:36:21]:
If you take your age, you multiply your age by your annual household income from all sources except inheritances. Inheritances don’t count in this formula. And then you divide it by ten. Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re age 40. You make $200,000 a year. You divide that by ten, the math works out to $800,000.40. Times 200,000 divided by ten, $800,000 is, that’s the baseline.

Wes Moss [00:36:50]:
That’s the, if you, if you have $800,000 accumulated or saved in overall net worth, this is not just cash in the bank, as our kids would say, but just overall net worth, then you’re an average, according to millionaire next door formula here, an average accumulator of wealth. If your net worth is $400,000, let’s say half of that baseline, then you’re an under accumulator of wealth. But if your net worth is 1.6 million, so double that 800,000, then you’re a Paul, a prodigious accumulator of wealth. Now, as I’m thinking about that, Jeff Lyd, I don’t think that, that. I guess if you were a retiree and you’re not currently earning anymore and you’re just living off your assets, I don’t know if that applies. You would have to go back to, let’s say, age 50 and maybe see what you had or maybe age 60, what your income was and how much you’d save. But I can just see people getting out their iPhones and pulling up the calculator as they’re listening here, which is exactly what I did as soon as I got off the zoom. My Zoom interview with Bill Danko and age.

Wes Moss [00:37:55]:
This is my age. Am I a paw at Uaw or aaw?

Jeff Lloyd [00:37:59]:
Well, we’re both looking at each other right now in studio, smiling, and you’re smirking because you’re looking over at me and what’s the time? I got my iPhone in my hand doing the exact same calculation.

Wes Moss [00:38:10]:
It is a really good, it’s a really good test. It’s a really good test. And the cool thing about it, too, if you’re 30 and you find yourself right now being a under accumulator or an average accumulator, the great news is this is, this is a really fun guideline. It also reminds me of the 25 X rule that we’ve talked about. We’ve done a whole podcast and show here on money matters as well. On the 25 X rule. That’s the other rule that I like to use. And I was reminded of this rule from my kids one day in the car ride to school where they, they literally just said, dad, what would you need to have in the bank? Is they’re very much about in the bank.

Wes Moss [00:38:46]:
They don’t believe in buildings or real estate, just in the bank to stop working and be able to hang out more and play golf with us on a Wednesday. And I said about 25 times my annual income, and I’m not quite there yet, guys. So we’re not playing golf on a Wednesday. But that rule. And again, if you’re excluding pensions and you’re excluding Social Security and you’re just looking at what would you have to have in assets, liquid. And I would count real estate assets here, and you could count business assets here, because it’s essentially the 4% plus rule in reverse. 4% plus rule says you can take 4% of your money. We want to max out what we can take out from our investments without running out.

Wes Moss [00:39:31]:
And the 4% rule is a really important rule for that. 25 X is the inverse of 4%. So if we have. If we. If we need 100,000, we simply say times 25, you need $2.5 million in order to have that level of income for the duration of retirement. I like this 25 x rule. Just because it’s so easy to remember. It’s just 25 times whatever you’re earning that you don’t even need an iPhone calculator for.

Wes Moss [00:40:00]:
All right, number eight. Lesson number eight. Don George.

Jeff Lloyd [00:40:04]:
Yeah, Don George. This episode was called living a life filled with travel.

Wes Moss [00:40:10]:
All right, Jeff, Lloyd, here’s what I learned. Travel leads to retirement happiness. It’s. It’s one of. Now, in our research, of course, we’ve seen, what’s the ultimate happiness booster?

Jeff Lloyd [00:40:21]:
Travel with friends.

Wes Moss [00:40:23]:
I heard you talking about that in the office this past week. Travel with friends.

Jeff Lloyd [00:40:28]:
Quick story. I was flying out to Houston, Texas, and we are just at the gate. We hadn’t even gotten on a plane yet, and I’m with my wife, and there’s this group of five or six ladies sitting next to us. Like I said, we haven’t even boarded the plane, and these ladies are having the time of their lives, and they haven’t reached their destination yet.

Wes Moss [00:40:51]:
Are they. Are they retirees?

Jeff Lloyd [00:40:53]:
They are retirees, yes.

Wes Moss [00:40:55]:
Are they on spring break? Summer break?

Jeff Lloyd [00:40:58]:
They were on a gardening trip.

Wes Moss [00:41:00]:
No. No, they were not.

Jeff Lloyd [00:41:01]:
They were going on a gardening trip to Houston. To Houston, of all places.

Wes Moss [00:41:06]:
Wow. That’s really. That’s. That’s kind of heartwarming. It was a gardening trip, and I need. I need five friends. It’s like a, it’s like a. In Japan, they would call that a moa.

Wes Moss [00:41:16]:
A group of five friends that garden for life together. All right, so speaking of Don George, travel leads are happy, happiness and retirement. We already know formulaically and empirically and statistically that if we take at least one trip per year with friends, we double our chances of ending up in the happy retiree group. That’s from our own research. Don George, though he is a legendary travel writer, this guy has traveled his entire life and had the love of travel in his teens and started writing about it. Then he ended up becoming the editor of National Geographic Traveler magazine. So this is a guy with some real travel street cred. And we know as we did the core pursuit challenge back in the spring, it was our version of the NCAA finals.

Wes Moss [00:42:07]:
Instead of basketball teams, we used core pursuits. These are hobbies on steroids. Guess what won. It was in the final, and we were pitting up against pickleball versus, let’s call it cycling and grilling versus taking a cruise, hang gliding and ultimately cruises. Ended up in the final four. That’s a version of travel. Well, in the final two, and travel ended up. So really it was travel versus travel.

Wes Moss [00:42:34]:
And guess what won. Travel. Travel wins. That’s what we want to do when we’re in retirement. It’s a top core pursuit, this hobby on steroids that we get so much from. But Don George teaches us that travel is really a journey of connection and personal growth, and that is maybe the root of why we love to travel so much. And you think about all the places you’ve been in the world and all that you’ve learned from all of those places. I think about, I was on the airplane recently with one of my kids, and on Delta, they have that little travel game where they give you a picture and a little hint and then you have to point to it on the map and it’s like you were way off or you were pretty close and we were going through that and, Lucas, wait.

Wes Moss [00:43:19]:
You’ve been a lot. How do you know that? You’ve been a lot of places. And I’m thinking, I traveled a lot when I was in college and when I was a kid. And all of those memories really stick with me to this day like it was yesterday. It’s really a part of my education. In fact, I think about and remember traveling much more than I remember school as a kid. So it is a part of who we are forever. Now, this is coming from a writer, lesson number two from him.

Wes Moss [00:43:46]:
And he made a career out of this. But writing is a way to relive your journey. And I think about I still to this day. I took a, spent about six months living in southern Spain. It was a little town called Seville, called pronounced Sevilla, and then traveled around for about a month at one semester in college. And I still have that journal. To this day, I still read it.

Jeff Lloyd [00:44:07]:
No lie. And this is probably the first time I’ve told you I did a summer in Spain, and I still have my journal from that summer.

Wes Moss [00:44:15]:
Where were you in Spain?

Jeff Lloyd [00:44:16]:
Salamanca.

Wes Moss [00:44:18]:
Salamanca.

Jeff Lloyd [00:44:19]:
It’s about 2 hours west of Madrid.

Wes Moss [00:44:21]:
Yeah.

Jeff Lloyd [00:44:21]:
So we did Salamanca, Madrid. And then actually went to Pamplona and.

Wes Moss [00:44:26]:
Did the running of the run. Did you get trampled?

Jeff Lloyd [00:44:28]:
I did not get trampled. I got really scared, though.

Wes Moss [00:44:30]:
Was it was this free? It was scary. I would think that’d be super scary.

Jeff Lloyd [00:44:35]:
Bulls running at you and thousands of people. You’re dodging the bulls and the. And the people running. Yeah, it’s.

Wes Moss [00:44:40]:
Dude, it’s great. Does somebody get trampled every year in that or does everybody get out the.

Jeff Lloyd [00:44:45]:
When I was running the first time, I looked back and saw an actual bull, it gored a guy. Really? It gored a runner. That was my first sight of seeing an actual bull. Bam. There’s a bull. Bam.

Wes Moss [00:44:58]:
Just ran over a runner or Gord gorged a runner.

Jeff Lloyd [00:45:02]:
Yes.

Wes Moss [00:45:03]:
So you still. So I’d love to read that journal entry.

Jeff Lloyd [00:45:06]:
I’m going to bring it in.

Wes Moss [00:45:07]:
I’d love to read that journal entry. And then embracing the unexpected. I think we all know this. The older we get, it’s think about this rainy days and you miss your train closed exhibits, all of those things that kind of, that was like, oh, it was a terrible day. Ends up being maybe the best day of those travels or maybe your most memorable day. When it comes to travels, all the things that went wrong, you think back of all your travels, they maybe ended up being, particularly with your kids or with your friends. Those are the memorable times of travel. We learn so much from that.

Wes Moss [00:45:40]:
Travel with friends. John George nails it. Wonderful episode, wonderful human number nine on the list, Jan Cullinan. What I learned from Jan, the importance of community. We know from other guests and we know that belonging is such a huge part of the equation, having a social network. A massive part of the equation. But the question, though, is that where do we have the right community? We think in retirement, I’m going to move to the lake. I’m going to move over.

Wes Moss [00:46:11]:
I’m going to move somewhere fun. But we don’t necessarily think about the community that’s going to be around us. And I’ve had folks that I’ve worked with over the years think they’re moving to a place that they’re going to really love, and they end up not necessarily loving their neighbors or not necessarily loving the community. And even though the location. The geography was right and it was the right spot. They ended up not necessarily loving the community, end up moving. And this is where Jan comes in, is that you’re not picking your house. And this is where Nancy Cullenade goes through really some amazingly fun examples around communities, one that would still floored by this.

Wes Moss [00:46:49]:
There’s an act, there’s a community for retired postal workers just for all male mail carriers alone, all in one community. Jeff, can you believe that?

Jeff Lloyd [00:46:57]:
No. I’m kind of sitting here in disbelief, shaking my head and kind of smirking and laughing like I didn’t know that was a real thing.

Wes Moss [00:47:03]:
It is.

Jeff Lloyd [00:47:03]:
It is.

Wes Moss [00:47:04]:
Well, you should listen to the podcast, number ten on the list. What I learned from David York, probably one of our just most articulate guests, on how he teaches us the importance of legacy. Inherited wealth can be powerful, and this is what I learned from David. Inherited wealth can be powerful or it can be destructive. And this is really talking about legacy and estate planning, because wealth is something that puts a great responsibility on a family. It’s not just, oh, we’ve got lots of wealth, everyone’s going to be taken care of and everyone’s going to be in great shape. David talks about entrusted families. These are families that really trust each other and they’re transparent about their wealth.

Wes Moss [00:47:52]:
And being transparent around your wealth through multiple generations, whether it’s grandfather, father and even kids, he makes a great case of why we need to really come together on our ultimate goals for that money, understand what the family believes and how they’re utilizing money. David says entrusted families prepare the family for wealth and not just the wealth for the family. And entrusted families maximize the positive benefits of wealth and minimize the negative effects. And we think money solves all these problems. We’ve got plenty of money in the family. It creates a whole new set of problems. And it can really be difficult for children that grow up really wealthy to have the independence that we go back to. Lesson, I think seven that Bill Danko talks about, millionaires next door, what do they have? They have independent children.

Wes Moss [00:48:48]:
And those, those children are financially independent as well. And that can, and that should be a topic of conversation for a wealthy family, what David York calls that, families that are entrusted with each other. With that, you can find the retire sooner podcast, even though you’re listening to money matters here on a Sunday morning on WSB radio. But you could find the retire sooner podcast on Apple. Or if you’re looking for specific episodes, you can go to wesmoss.com, comma, go under the podcast tab and find any of the lessons we talked about. All of these were episodes of the retire sooner podcast that I hope you find enjoyable, and I hope they’re helpful on your retire sooner journey as well. With that, you can find me and the money matters team@yourwealth.com. dot Jeff Lloyd thank you for being here on this Sunday morning.

Jeff Lloyd [00:49:38]:
Thanks for having me.

Wes Moss [00:49:39]:
Have a wonderful rest of your day.

Mallory Boggs [00:49:46]:
This is provided as a resource for informational purposes and is not to be viewed as investment advice or recommendations. This information is being presented without consideration of the investment objectives, risk tolerance, or financial circumstances of any specific investor and might not be suitable for all investors. The mention of any company is provided to you for informational purposes and as an example only, and is not to be considered investment advice or recommendation or an endorsement of any particular company. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. There is no guarantee offered that investment return, yield or performance will be achieved. The information provided is strictly an opinion and for informational purposes only and it is not known whether strategies will be successful. There are many aspects and criteria that must be examined and considered before investing.

Mallory Boggs [00:50:34]:
This information is not intended to and should not form a primary basis for any investment decision that you may make. Always consult your own legal, tax or investment advisor before making any investment tax, estate or financial planning considerations or decisions. Investment decisions should not be made solely based on information contained hereinhood.